research

“Meetings, encounters, events, various types of collaboration between people, games, festivals, and places of connectivity, in a word all manner of encounter and relational invention thus represents, today, aesthetics objects likely to be looked as such, with pictures and sculptures regarded here merely as specific cases of production of forms with something other than a simple aesthetic consumption in mind.”
Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics. Paris: Presses du réel, 2002.

Nicolas Bourriaud explores this notion of relational aesthetics through examples of what he calls Relational Art. According to Bourriaud, Relational Art encompasses “a set of artistic practices which take as
their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space.’

A relational artist might, for example, convert a gallery space into a temporary stand for serving coffee, with the addition
of background music, suitable lighting, books to read, and comfortable chairs. The artwork here consists of creating a social
environment in which people come together to participate in a shared activity. Bourriaud claims “the role of artworks is no
longer to form imaginary and utopian realities, but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real,
whatever scale chosen by the artist.” ^[4]